Berserker Part 19

Jarn was pulled from his revelry by an incessant low growling and strange shlurping sound. He peered around the corner of a wagon to behold a scene that seared itself into the back of his skull and would be the subject of many nightmares to come. A small boy, Jarn recognized as one of Gerda’s helpers was lying on the ground, in a pool of his own fluids. His eyes gazed blankly down at his abdomen, where a greasy little leach of a Gnoll was firmly entrenched. Up to its eyeballs in the child’s intestines, gulping and chewing ravenously. The boy looked up at Jarn, dull recognition in his glazed eyes.

It was as if another cannon had barked, Jarn was thrown forward on an explosive wave of rage and hate, shouting screaming and shrieking with the unholy energy of a demon at the abomination. This should not exist, this cannot exist, this doesn’t exist, YOU DO NOT EXIST! If the power of Jarn’s mind was enough to kill, that bloody little worm would’ve promptly detonated. Seeing as it didn’t Jarn just had to do the best he could. The Gnoll didn’t even have a chance to look around before it was dragged up off the boy by a grip which could’ve crushed rock. It’s slavering features were brought level with a face that would’ve made the Four Devils of Torment soil themselves. Jarn’s eyes were two smoldering pits of hate, his nostrils were flared, pumping air in and out like a bellows, the rest of his features were obscured by a slurry of blood and muck. Dying his skin a fitting hot red, it was a surprise the sweat on his face wasn’t boiling away.

Jarn tried vainly to say something coherent to the miserable little thing, but the words couldn’t be shaped around the banshee’s scream which welled up from within and seemed to go on for an eternity. The Gnoll, shaken and deafened, began to feel a distinct pressure on its arms where it was held firmly, whining in anticipation of the pain to come. The pressure increased to an unbearable level, Jarn could hear tendons creaking and groaning in the scrawny flea-bitten thing’s body. In a virulent spray of red, it’s arms were yanked from their moorings. The Gnoll fell to the ground to die in keening agony, its arms several feet away. Jarn gently picked up the stricken boy and carried him around the wagons. In the death the child took a cherubic quality, as if he was just sleeping and a the mearist coaxing would arouse him. After aimlessly stumbling around, he finally returned to the place where he had fought alongside Seryan and Tyrel.